The Keyword + Year Content/Rankings Hack - Whiteboard&nbspFriday

The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

What's the secret to earning site traffic from competitive keywords with decent search volume? The answer could be as easy as 1, 2, 3 — or more precisely, 2, 0, 1, 7. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand lets you in on a relatively straightforward tactic that can help you compete in a tough space using very fresh content.

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Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about what is sometimes known as the keyword-plus-year hack. This is the idea that you take a keyword that has some existing search volume, and you add on a date, either a month or a month and a year, and you are able to outrank many of the other players because it's a much less competitive space. I'll show you what I'm talking about. It helps to have an example.

Keyword trend graph

So let's say there are a good number of people every year who search for the best web designs. They want to get design inspiration, or they just want to see what's out there. They're looking for the design gallery, so they search for best web designs. Many times, though, those folks will get results from the last 5 to 10 years, and they'll see those in there and they'll go, "You know, I want something more modern, more updated," and so they will revise their query to "best web designs 2016." In fact, many people even start with these queries. So they want to see the top Android games of January 2017. They want to see the best summer dishes 2017 for planning on cooking something.

They're looking for something that is trendy. Maybe they're looking around fashion, or you see this a lot in searches around hairstyle or anything that is grading products or services. Who are the best real estate agents in Seattle? No, no, not the 2012 edition of "Seattle Met Magazine." I want 2017. Who are the best real estate agents in Seattle 2017? So they'll add this year on there. What's great is, because this year or month only happens as it happens, those searches only happen as we get to that time period, the keyword research will not expose it to you. So if, for example, let's make this 2017, so "best web designs 2017."

We're filming this Whiteboard Friday in January. There have only just started to be a few searches for best web designs 2017. There have only just started to be a few any keyword searches that include the word 2017, because 2017 has just started. Therefore, your competitors are not seeing those in their keyword research list. They're not targeting them. There's not a ton of content out there yet, and so it's easier. Even though the volume tends to be lower than the usual keyword — sometimes it's higher, but usually lower — you will find it is vastly easier to rank for, and it's also the case — this is sort of beautiful — if you're using this tactic, even though it's higher in volume to have "best web designs" versus "best web designs 2017," the one without the year, it is often the case that Google will bias to show more recent content, especially if there are lots of searches that get revised to include the temporal number or date.

That is awesome because it means that you can win twice. You can rank for this one, which, of course, the search volume for it will die off at the end of the year, but you might be able to rank for this one as well. If you keep that updated, and change it up, and add to it, retire the old one, move the old one over to an old URL, put the new one up at the new URL, or keep the same URL if you're trying to build on top of the link authority that you've built to that URL, you can have some awesome ranking and traffic power.

The process

How do you do this?

1. Conduct keyword research using:

NON-date keywords – You want to conduct the keyword research without using the date. I'm going to start with non-date keywords. So if I'm in Keyword Explorer, or if I'm doing my keyword research in AdWords, or wherever I am, I would search for "best web design," get a big list of my target keywords.

Last year + keywords – Then I would go look at last year numbers. For example, I would search for "2016 best web design" or "best web design 2016" or anything from my keyword export or list that includes years.

2–3 years ago + keywords – I would go two and three years ago, so that I could get a sense for the volume that includes the year. I would also be looking for month at this time.

Then I'd use Google Trends, or if you're not a fan of Google Trends — they can be a little squirrely with some data — SimilarWeb and Jumpshot also have keyword trend data, at least at the head of the demand curve, that can be good, and try and identify some of that seasonality. If you see that there's a high season that includes a particular month, that's often an indication that month plus year could be there, and then you can go and look in here. I could add "May 2016 best web design" to see if there was actually search volume for just the May keyword.

3. Use Google SERPs to determine if the month/year tactic is popular or underserved in your niche

Then I'm going to use Google SERPs. I'm going to check the keyword difficulty of those SERPs, and I'd probably look to see how many different outlets are producing monthly or annual content. For annual content, it's really going to be very January- and February-centric. That's when it all gets produced. Then, if it is underserved, that means there's more opportunity there, but, even still, it's almost always a lower difficulty, easier to get in there.

4. Target and create that timely content

So, to do that, you're going to be using:

Recent data. If I were creating a page to target "best web design 2017," I would want to use designs that have come out in the last month only or maybe just at the very end of 2016.

Employ emerging trends and language. So maybe it's PWAs, maybe it is language around clean design, whatever the trends in the field are right now.

Serve the recency of the searcher's intent by giving them the ability or showing right up front that my data and my information is very recent and that I'm helping them with what's going now, not just historically.

5. Publish as early in the period as possible

You want to publish this content as early as you can in the period without doing it earlier. So what I don't want to do is have my launch be in December 2016. December is a very quiet period anyway. It's tough to get traction and attention, it's tough to build links, but it also can be the case that you won't hit the search algorithms as recency systems. Google has these algorithms called the QDF, query deserves freshness, and so if they see that you're producing that content a month or two months before it's actually the right date, there's going to be skepticism, both from users who might stumble upon it or find it, but also from engines. So you want to publish early in the period, but not any earlier than that.

With this tactic, yeah, you can hack your way to some pretty awesome traffic. I look forward to hearing from all of you who've done this, who are trying it, and hear your experiences. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Nice post Rand! Have tried this method for a local travel agency few years back which worked for them.

However, you have already mentioned about the URL part in the post, but just to make it more clear for fellows and to share my similar approach, I want to take your own example of 'best website designs'.

Suppose, the target keyword is - 'best website designs', and you are looking to rank for 'best website designs 2017', then create content, meta tags, alt tags, etc including the year but don't include year in your URL.

For example, keep URL like this for this page - example.com/best-website-designs

That way, when you will be writing for 'best website designs 2018' somewhere in Jan 2018, you can replace 2017's content with new one on that same page.

And for 2017, create a new URL (eg. example.com/best-website-designs-2017) and move 2017's content on that page.

You can go either way - in some cases, there's value in having archives of years past if searchers are querying those prior years. In others, replacing or updating the content on the same URL each year makes more sense (when there's little value to maintaining the old content and few searches for prior years).

Exactly. In case there is very little value in maintaining archives, it is best to keep the url the same and change the content. You can add the year in the title and the content in the page. That way you will have the benefit of an already indexed page and whatever link equity the page already has.

Thanks for checking out WB Friday this week all! Just a few notes to kick off the conversation:

You don't always need the query to include the year for this tactic to work. If searchers show a bias to recency/freshness in their query/click/search satisfaction habits, Google's likely to favor the newer content anyway, e.g. best mobile phones, web design trends, new TV shows, etc.

Q for y'all: in addition to using the keyword+year, and to making the content relevant and targeted to recency, what others tactics have you used to help show Google + searchers that it's a better choice for trend/temporal-focused queries?

p.s. Yes, I did shave off my mustache today (almost exactly 3 years after growing it out) following three profitable months in a row for Moz. But, since I have a lot of travel upcoming, we've still got a store of 4-5 more Whiteboard Fridays where you'll still see it :-})

p.p.s. Akash from KeywordKeg created a great resource with all the terms/phrases that used "2016" (and thus, will likely be good opportunities in 2017).

The thing about searching Google is that it is biased - it shows different results based on your former searches and websites you have visited so far, right? So, what I see in the SERP for "web design trends" is definitely going to be different than what you see, isn't that so? For example, to me - it includes two articles from my Google+ page because they match the query, but I am not sure if you can see them as well.

Great WBF, btw, and can't wait to see you without mustache! :D

Edit: I just saw that you linked to the image on Twitter. It's still you, who'd have thought! ;)

When I worked within the discount code sector it wasn't uncommon to be building pages or adjusting targeting for the following year 6 months ahead, if you are only adjusting the content on a page you can leave it quite late but if it's a new page focusing on upcoming trends that are likely to be popular, the earlier you can get it out the longer you will have to push that ranking up and establish yourself.

The QDF was never an issue in this area, possibly because of the constantly changing nature of the content on the page (codes expire, new codes added daily), and users only found the page if they were searching for codes that far in advance, we justified it by listing codes that had an expiry in that year or later - so they would still be valid.

I had great success with a newer website using this tactic to highlight what would be the biggest green building trends for 2016. We published in Nov of 15, and I think because it was aimed at an industry that's always looking out ahead to stay on the cutting edge, it worked.

So smart to evaluate popular (and non competitive) searches for keyword + year prior.

My success in grabbing seasonal keyword searches have also stemmed from Google Correlate where you can go back a month or two to evaluate what other common searches are occurring during that time (and around your keyword). This always provided me with additional content marketing ideas for clients (for the following year) and is fun insight into a topic's seasonality. :)

Random Thought: Google Trend's "Breast Cancer" search has always fascinated me because it looks SO arrhythmic! October is Breast Cancer awareness month but....STILL!!! THAT IS A HEART BEAT!!!!

Great one, thanks. I suggest, whenever you update the same content by changing title, meta, etc with the current year, you should add one or two paragraph or just edit into some of them to make it look more updated.

For example - Top 5 Web design trend for 2016 . Now, 2016 is over and you are suppose to update the same content by including 2017 in the title, then you may add two more latest trend/tactics and update it something like this - Top 7 web design tends for 2017.

This way, you will fuel in old content, add some more latest trends and It will boost the traffic.

You are 100% correct just because you find a keyword fetching 1000K searches a month doesn't mean that if you get a #1 spot for that keyword you will get about 1000K visitors a month from that keyword....in fact, the actual number of visitors you get from that term will shock you.

As per my understand, generic keywords are good for generating traffic but are poor when it comes to quality/specific traffic. That is not good as per sales perspective/branding/quality traffic. There is also another reason being that targeting generic keywords are hard to rank.

Previously I worked with e-commerce site they are basically gifted portals in India. I give an example, let's say that our core keyword was "Holi Gifts" and we want to write the content on it in specific time period.

Just a rough estimate on the buying phases could be:

1. Holi Gifts - Phase I

Purpose - To check out the websites that show up in Google against the term and the variety of Holi Gifts available to order.

Searched by - This term can be used by digital marketers, Website Owners, & some potential buyers.

Traffic - Huge

Conversion/quality traffic - Very Low

And it is very less chance to get ranked on top 10

2. Best Holi Gifts - Phase II

Purpose - To specifically search for multiple options in Holi Gifts

Searched by - digital marketers, Website Owners, Potential Buyers

Traffic - moderate

Conversion/quality traffic - moderate

3. Best Holi Gifts for sweetheart - Phase III

Intention - To search for Holi Gifts especially by lovers

Searched by - Potential Buyers and maybe a few digital marketers

Traffic - Low

Conversion Rate - High

4. Best Holi Gifts for in 2014- Phase IV

Intention - To search for Best Holi Gifts in 2014.

Searched by - Potential Buyersa few digital marketers

Traffic - Very Low

Conversion/quality/specific traffic- Very High

The above may not be accurate but we can get the idea. There is not any predefined tool that tells you how exactly you need to select keywords I believe brainstorming would the best tool. As you have suggested in your post that is a good idea and we have to follow the process as you mentioned steps that including generic keywords, previous year monthly trends before finalizing the keywords.

Regarding 5) ...post early but not earlier.... Just want to share my own experience. I heard about this tactic for the first time at the end of October 2016 and decided to try it.

On one of my websites I've created an article, something like "best [keyword] 2017" and posted it early on November. Till the late December it was nowhere (position 100+), at the end of December it was on 8-9 pages of SERP. The I checked it on 5th of January. And voila! That article is #2 in Google US. With 0 backlinks!

It was there for a few weeks, then competitors have used the same strategy but together with link building. They pushed me out of # 2 spot, but I'm still on 1st page of Google.

I did it in the past, however, my results only last for few months (1 or 2). The results were pretty good, as freshness was a key element. In my opinion, this tactic can only be valuable your webpage has a certain age as you can't rank higher for a longer period, I mean, at the beginning a new webpage with a strong DA can benefit it, but the result won't last as the older pages with higher PA and DA will overturn the final results on search engines.Thank again for your whiteboard... always a pleasure to read it.

That's what all about Rand has mentioned in the blog, yes you can update the content just by changing the title, meta, etc. You can add something latest in blog as well to make it more recent and updated blog will rank highest in Google. And yes, must change the date, it helps a lot.

As of now many people are not updating new content in old one, they are just changing published date and try to index - Worthless strategy. Good on is (As per my opinion) -> Target Audience + The Keywords + Business Objectives + Year Content + Promote That Content = Ranking Hack.

Great Whiteboard Friday as always! It's really useful content about how you can capture more search volume for keywords that are year based.

To answer your question about what other methods you can use to show Google and searchers that your content is more relevant, I would add Date Schema. By including this on the page, it helps Google understand how recent your content is, and when the date shows up in the SERPs, it might be the difference in whether someone clicks through or not. This can be especially useful if you have a page that is being updated every year.

Started in late November with one of my websites. For the main keyword in a niche I haven't dropped out of the 1st page in recent months, but struggle to get above 5th position. http://i.imgur.com/vkCvKiE.png Top-3 websites are websites dedicated to the year 2017. with domains like "year-2017.com" with lots of content, that seems to be rewritten from identical "year-2016.com" websites. Just shows how well Google cares about the quality. They basically created a doorway website for queries about ****2017

Still, a nice share of traffic comes from this keyword because people don't get what they're looking for on those websites..

Absolutely great stategy. In the last weeks of 2016 we made this strategy for a real estate agency in Alicante, Spain with posts like 'tools for selling a home in 2017', 'international straegies for real estate in 2017', or 'real estate forecasts for 2017'. The firt two weeks of January were completed with this kind of posts.

Those post were in the firs page and positions i the following days or weeks for keywords including the new year, with a good number of visitors and contacts. Day after day they become less effective, but we also created "new posts" with the generic information such a 'new international strategies for real estate', with links from the other posts and gaining positions slowly. Obviously the generic keywords are much harder to stay high.

I guess for economic areas it would suit very welll (forecasts) , and for changing areas like SEO or web design every days there's always a new tool , and the first one writing about it will have many advantages.

Now, in the middle of February, would be too late for this strategy??? Will we have to wait to 2018 for good results?

I think the above also depends on the type of Industry you represent. I work for a for profit educational institute and am usually early adopter of keywords that contain "year". However, the moment websites with better authority (.gov , .edu et al) uses those words, my site is pushed into oblivion. :) My experience, might not apply to all.

I think it is clever to put in the old year too. Like "Latest fashion 2016 / 2017). Or "Latest fashion 2017/2016. New Designs" So that 2017 is closer to the keyword (fashion) and it includes the word "Latest" and "New" since this might be searched in combination and it gives Google the signal that it really is about new / latest stuff.

Thanks Rand, great video as always! I use this strategy for a long time now but I wonder if this affects my ranking for my main targeting keyword? For example I want to rank for "Credit card" and now my title is "Credit card: find the best providers in 2017". Will google rank me lower for my main keyword "Credit card" when I add a date to it?

Since I use this strategy for low search volume keywords, I don´t know how it affects keywords with high volume?

This is very common with people who promote Amazon via affiliate marketing and not really super ground breaking.... Say stuff like "best vacuum cleaner 2017, best beard trimmer 2017 etc and every other household item you can think of... people been doing this for years and yes they will rank for with and without the year with enough authority.. some of the sites that have a lot of authority will even ranking for the term without the "best"... like just "mattress"...

Rand as always amazing video and something I personally have never thought of but search for all the time. This can be for recipes, design and dev tips, or even comics.

I can see this for so many clients of mine though and timely as if you have a fall campaign coming up for an auto shop something like "2017 Fall Car Care Tips" or something along those lines would actually be something to be shared as the searcher will find it relevant but also on top of search during that period.

I plan on implementing this across the board and for so many of us we live by seasons or in the present year for our information searches and why not capitalize.

Great video / post and thanks as always for making me look good on Monday morning meetings with info I grabbed off of WBF.

I've used this tip a lot but it was bad in my first posts because I used to set the year in the url ... But now I'm still in Top 1 in a competitive "hosting" niche with a post using the year 2014 in the url. As you said quite well, update the content with actual year works very well. :)

I made this strategy last year, but I redirect the original post that had:

example-url/ to -example-2016/

And this year I updated the content for 2017, but when I tried to make a new redirection, I had a trouble in wordpress: The redirect did not work to example-2017, but it redirect to the original: example-url/

By the way the post is ranking even better than last year, but I have doubts about it is going to rank for ever in the 2016 year in the URL.

Good video as always, Figured this was public knowledge. Had some great success with this back in 2011 / 12, some pages fetching thousands of unique's a day. Unfortunately the site was sold as the year was ending so we couldn't switch it up for the next year to see the result/effects but still interesting.

This is absolutely a fabulous idea, particularly for Coupon Websites. If you write the exact month and Year, it really pays. We have implemented this on CouponzPoint . We have got the encouraging results.

I've 'unknowingly' performed this hack every year for the last 8 years. I have a site where I offer free templates for iWork - and my most popular template year in and year out is a Numbers Calendar template. Each year the naming structure is the same 20XX Horizontal Numbers Calendar Template. Each year I go back to the previous years template and add a link to the newest template - I don't remove the previous year's template as people still want to download them. I also upload the newest templates typically by September of the year before (i.e. the 2017 calendar was uploaded in September 2016). I have found that typically by the end of January of the current year Google has changed to the most recent years calendar template in the generic search 'Numbers Calendar Template'. So far, this year its still showing the 2016 calendar. But I've held the top few spots for this search term for years using this strategy.

As always, this article is amazing Rand. Now that you’ve mentioned this technique, it may not really be unique anymore and we may see competition on keyword+year on the rise :-) Although I don’t used the keyword-and-year strategy too often (because it to say “best company in 2017” would often trigger spam warning), I’ve observed that adding the words “cheap”, “inexpensive”, “friendly” and “reliable” to keywords, is quite effective.